Post-Infertile Musings on Motherhood

Tag: parenting

A couple months ago we noticed that The Dude’s eyes were appearing crossed when he was trying to focus on things. Usually, if he is in his high chair and trying to focus on something across the room, such as the television, or if he’s trying to focus on us, we’d notice one eye cross a bit.

At his routine checkup with his pediatrician, he passed his vision screening, but we told her we were concerned about the crossing or lazy eye, and she referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist. (Sidenote: Let’s take a moment and talk about how grateful I am for a pediatrician who does NOT dismiss our concerns, even if she doesn’t see the same need. I learned when battling infertility that being on a team with your doctors is key. And that if they don’t listen to you, they aren’t the doctor FOR you. So shoutout to Dr. M for listening and acting)

Alright, so this week, after a ridiculously long wait for the appointment to arrive (about a month), we had The Dude’s eyes checked.

Now, in my mind, I remember going to the eye doctor as a child, and what I remember is a nice doctor showing me some cards, asking me to look in certain directions, and an overall pleasant experience where it was discovered that yes, I did need glasses.

This was not that.

We did start with a rather pleasant nurse, who asked us a few questions about our own vision and medical history, along with any genetic issues we were possibly aware of. The Dude was pleasant, playful and happy, though still a bit shy. After she left the room, however, he was all about exploring and wanted to fully investigate every piece of equipment available, including the doctor’s chair.

We waited about 15 minutes or so, and then the doctor arrives. She came in like a gust of wind, with her lab coat flailed out behind her and her words coming out quickly and I knew, somehow, that this was about to be an experience. First of all, the babe instantly clammed up, as he tried to adjust to this frantic paced energy, and he instantly squeezed his eyes shut when she began to try and take a look. After about the third time he buried his head into my armpit rather than allow her to see his eyes, she starts rattling off some other ideas about things to try, and presses a remote that activates a little barking dog robot on the wall. He could have given a crap less about the dog, and is pulling my hair by this point.

Almost immediately, she decided that this wasn’t working, and that she’d have to dilate his eyes to do a full exam. Assuring us that she does this procedure on babies as small as preemies, she let us know that a nurse would be coming in to administer a few drops of anesthetic and then drops to dilate his pupils. Keep in mind, after a 15 minute wait to see her, this all happens in a span of like 4 minutes. She’s out of the room almost as fast as she entered, and he is calm yet again.

When the new nurse comes in, she is friendly, but lets us know that he is not going to like her very much, and that she’s sorry about it. She instructs us to hold him down as she administers the drops, and as expected, he is LIVID. But when she’s done, even as he’s still crying, we hear him exclaim “YAY”, and he’s happy and smiling once more. This is repeated once more, with another pleasant nurse, in the span of 20 minutes as one of his eyes doesn’t dilate. And again, once all is said and done, he’s a happy baby.

And here’s where things start to suck.

When Dr. Quickshot comes back, she notices that yet again, he’s clammed up and won’t allow her to actually look into his eyes. She decides we have to move to the “procedure room” where they can lie him down on a table and get a better look at his pupils. Once in this room, my husband and I, along with the two nurses, are told that we’ll need to hold him down AGAIN, so that she can finally see.

When I tell you I was internally freaking out, while trying to remain calm on the outside. I held him, watching every part of the procedure, where they used tools to keep his eyes open, which again they assured us wasn’t hurting him thanks to the anesthetic, and I held back my own tears while trying to keep saying, “You’re doing so good, Dude! You’re alright!” I felt my husband bury his head into the back of my shoulder because he couldn’t deal. And I gotta tell you…at this moment of the appointment, with this brusque doctor shining things into my son’s eyes, and my husband’s hand clinching my back, and my child’s scared face burned into my memory forever,….I descended into my own sunken place.

I began to examine my journey as a parent, question my decision to allow this all to take place, and wonder how I’ll feel if at the end of all this torment, my baby’s eyes are perfectly normal and should have just been left the hell alone. Should I have said something before we got to this point? Is this actually normal? What the hell is going on? From down in these depths of doubt and sadness, where I’m barely drowning out his screaming, I finally hear the doctor say,

“it’s a good thing you brought him in. He is severely farsighted in both eyes. He’s going to need glasses. And he’s going to need to wear them all the time.”

And still holding back my tears, I am relieved. NOT that he needs glasses, but that I was correct in following my instincts. That I hadn’t put him through this whole ordeal for nothing. They let him up, and again through his own tears he says, “Yay”, and “All done”, and finally, most humorously, “BYE BYE!”.

We leave with a prescription for pretty thick glasses, a +6, which she says is about 4 points higher than most, and a list of pediatric eye wear companies. The nurses are visibly shaken and one even tells us how sorry she is to have had to make him cry. He gets stickers and sunglasses, and is happy and smiling once again.

Once in the car, he is happy and singing, and I sing with him, and play his music over the bluetooth, and I tell him how great a job he did and that he’s a tough guy. But we don’t pull off right away. Instead we sit, and we try and calm down, and I see my husband’s eyes well up, and I tell him, “There’s some consolation in knowing that there was a problem and we didn’t ignore it. And he’s fine, and we did a good job, and the right thing.”

They drop me off at work. Where I go to my desk, and I’m glad it doesn’t face the public, or anyone else really. Because I finally let myself deal with the procedure, and the fear I saw in his eyes, and the realization of how hard it’s been for him to see clearly. And I cry for a few minutes, before taking on the bravery of my toddler, and pressing forward.

I’ve been restricting my social media for close to 8 months. It’s been most helpful to me, especially when my panic attacks were at their very worst, to be selective about what I allow into my mental space. Unfortunately, that has included a lot of social interaction.

That said, I am still visible through posts on the Babe’s IG or other family members’ posts. Because of this, I often wonder what things people say when they see me smiling or otherwise appearing “normal” on the pages of others. Do they assume that I’m “fine” and just being standoffish? Or worse, do they believe that now that I have a kid, I’m focusing so much on him that I’ve kind of “got the goody and gone”? Do they think I’ve abandoned my infertility flock, in exchange for the “bliss” of parenthood? I hope they don’t. But I know they do.

Infertility was so very much a battle because it is a disease that debilitates you from the inside. Your heart and mind battle with one another at all hours of the day and keep you bound in this inner turmoil that affects your outer attitude. But no one can see it. You’re fighting for your life, and nobody knows how hard. It’s one of the many invisible ailments that humans often suffer from. Now that I’m supposedly on the other side, I’ve been placed in yet another one.

Depression isn’t always dark rooms and tears. (though I’ve had my share of those also). Instead, depression can be smiling in photographs while battling obsessive and intrusive thoughts. It can be nailing everything at work, while fighting through panic attacks in your car at lunch. It can be experiencing pure elation at the thought of your infant, while also experiencing sheer terror at every turn.

Depression doesn’t look like people think it does, and so they don’t respond to you the way you hope they will.

So I’ve tried to be as honest and direct as I possibly can with people while I’m on this journey to recovery. When they ask why I’m not on Facebook, I tell them the truth. When they invite me out, I try to give a real reason for my not going out. When someone asks me how I’m feeling, I give them more than they bargained for. And I don’t apologize for it.

But that doesn’t stop me from wondering obsessing about whether or not that’s enough to keep from hurting, offending, or upsetting those I love or like.

Those are our baby shower thank you cards. We held off until after Babe’s birth to make them, so that we could include a photo of him as a nice gift in return. Which still took us a little longer to order because we needed to be able to afford them.

This is March. Babe is 9 months old. These are in his closet…

And what really makes this an ultimate fail, is that I’ve tried multiple times to get these darn things out.

I had family over to help us fill them out. Nothing got accomplished.

I had times set for my husband and I to work on them. Nothing got accomplished.

I sat down and worked on them myself. I think I got 10 done and then fell asleep.

And so, here they still are. I feel extremely bad about them sitting there, and then I tell myself to just DO IT! And then the Babe wants something, and I lose track of it all over again.

Also, there’ve been some instances where I’ve handed cards to people and watched as they kind of sat it aside or put it in their purse, never to be seen again. And here I was having etiquette panic attacks.

So, I’m sharing this fail as a reminder to me and YOU, that as terrible as it feels, life goes on.

And I still struggle with saying phrases like, “my son”, or “when I was pregnant” because I so often forget that it actually happened. For the past nine years, I’ve been consumed with the unfulfilled desire for parenthood, and fighting through the emotional and physical turmoil that accompanied it.

I am one of the 1in8 who battles infertility.

This time last year, after finally getting pregnant after in-vitro fertilization, I found myself deep in the throes of antepartum depression and anxiety. Never heard of that? Don’t worry, I hadn’t either until it overtook me. This form of depression, one that occurs during and not after pregnancy, is even lesser discussed than postpartum, which itself is only recently getting the real attention it deserves.

There are many reasons people struggle with APD, but for me, it was the extreme pressure I felt as a public figure in the infertility blogging world. I had a number of people who’d been on this journey with me and my family for so very long, and I just didn’t want to say or do anything to hurt those who were still in the fight. I was also extremely terrified that something was bound to go wrong.

Infertility treatment is chock full of buildups and letdowns. New things that are supposed to help, only turning out to hinder, or new doctors who have great words to get you into their offices, but then turn out to treat you like a number. Positive results followed by devastating blows. It’s exhausting, and infuriating, and terrifying.

I didn’t want to do or say ANYTHING that would ruin this moment that I’d worked so hard to achieve. So instead of reaching out, I retreated to a very quiet corner of my world and put my head down. Not even really announcing that we were pregnant until about the the 21st week.

Anywhoo, as I was in my own little corner in my own little chair (shameless Cinderella reference), I was also taking note of the many things that I did find a way to enjoy about becoming a mother. I was also slowly learning that coming from the infertility world, my thoughts on many things differed slightly from those who had achieved pregnancy and parenting unassisted. So I’m a mom in theory, but I’ve accepted that I’m not going to always feel like I fit in with “typical” moms, and that’s okay.

I’m working to carve out my own little branch of this motherhood thing, and I’m inviting you along as I figure it out.

That is after a specific trip to Babies R Us to get this swaddle because the Spouse and I yearned to sleep for a change. I now firmly believe in it.

We tried a couple different swaddle sacks. This one, had us fooled. But the very feature that led us to buy it, snaps that let you change it to an open-legged swaddle, was its downfall. The Babe quickly figured out how to get his hands out of there, and the party was over.

We soon learned that the idea of having the snaps was a great one, but not very functional for our long baby.

So, back to the Halo Sleep Sack it is.

Mom-like

Momlike: adj. Having the attributes of being a mother, while not adhering to, recognizing, or embracing the traditional motherhood tropes.
Tackling the highs and lows of becoming a new mama after infertility. Complete with a fair share of wth moments, elated instances, and postpartum revelations through the eyes of a post-infertile.